


String Theory

by dashery



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Gen, Trollstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 17:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1355536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/pseuds/dashery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jadael Haalie lives in hemonymity on the green moon. Karkat Vantas thinks she has powers that can turn the tide of his rebellion. Deivin Sridar takes way too long to get to the point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	String Theory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [correctDichotomy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/correctDichotomy/gifts).



> Thank you to everyone who read this and gave me feedback on Karkat's and Jade's voices!

_Confinement: phenomenon described in quantum chromodynamics in which the force between quarks does not diminish as they are separated._

***

ON ALTERNIA'S GREEN MOON

Underneath a strange, shimmering latticework of wire, gears, and stars, a ten-sweep-old troll looked up from her work. She chewed the end of her draft pencil, frowning, and plucked a string that stretched skyward from where she knelt. Colored lights burst across the mesh dome enclosing her hive, rippling through the metal filigree like a sound, an electric aurora.

The brightest streaks split and scattered in fractal curves that changed hue at every bounce. The whole construct was in motion, turning gently with the moon's spin. Dials clicked into place like tectonics in miniature. She studied the patterns intently as light broke around mirrors embedded in the mesh, her ocular globes darting from knot to knot of color with practiced ease. She grinned brightly at what she found and tied up her hair.

A spiral of green and gold flickered around an aperture that, just tonight, just as she'd meticulously planned against her star charts and almanacs, framed a jewel-red star.

She grabbed her rifle by the strap and slung it across her back without slowing. Her second-smallest telescope--still over two hand-spans long--waited for her just beside the door. She ran out onto the dust-dry surface of the green moon, leaving her cage of colored threads behind. It winked her on her way as it had since she had built it to remind her of the way of things.

Four sweeps ago to the day, Jadael Haalie had run out of fingers.

***

Someone messaged her on her way to the observation tower. Jadael checked the sender, laughed, and returned Mini-husktop 4.01 (custom-designed for quick conversation and jotting down notes) to her pocket with a fond eye-roll. Instead, she activated the Trollian app on her smartglasses. It wasn't the most convenient way to talk, but she knew she could let him ramble for a while.

\-- temporizedGuillotine [ TG ] began trolling gangreneGemma [ GG ] at ??:??:?? --

TG: (jad/ael)

The lines of text rolled unobtrusively along the bottom of her lenses. Without paying them much mind, Jadael thrust her telescope into her pocket and sprang up the tower ladder. It was a pretty long way to the viewing platform, and her friend's intermittent chatter eased the monotony of climbing.

TG: (jadael are/you there)  
TG: (ja/da)  
TG: (jadael/haalie)  
TG: (j to the deezus/to the h double allie)  
TG: (jadael you really should capitalize on/the eminent remixability of your name)

The platform wasn't technically a platform--at least, not traditionally so. Its floor swept upwards from the center to form a perfect hemisphere, as if someone had sliced open a globe and scraped out the pith. After constructing a circular sitting ledge within the bowl of it and padding the seats with cushions, Jadael found it made both a good vantage point and a comfortable nest.

While Trollian continued to ping, Jadael pushed her glasses up her forehead and raised her telescope to the sky. With the red star as her guide and Alternia at her back, she recalculated the pattern of flashes across her ceiling as coordinates. They led her to a patch of darkness, only faintly starred, from which nothing but a small, low-orbit satellite stood out.

Not yet.

TG: (ima call my next drop/ode to jay)  
TG: (or troll benny/and the jads)  
TG: (meet the/jadsons)  
TG: (jadael and/troll silent bob)  
TG: (see that ones doubly ironic because your/silence indicates youre either ignoring me)  
TG: (or asleep and/ignoring me)  
TG: (which is hella unmannerly jsyk/im extremely hurt)

Patiently, pusher thrumming like a hummingbeast under her ribs, Jadael held her breath until she could just make out the telltale iron twinkle of an Imperial scalpelcraft. Or, in this case, ex-Imperial.

She lowered her scope and found her mouth half-open in anticipation. It was almost time.

But first, someone owed her some answers.

TG: (jad/ael)  
TG: (jada jada bo bada banana fana/fo fada me my mo mada)  
GG: deivin!!  
TG: (no the next part is jada again/didnt anyone teach you the troll name game)  
GG: as a matter of fact deivin  
GG: since ive never met another troll in person to play games with  
GG: and havent had contact with anyone but my lusus since your last transmission  
GG: which was three perigees ago!  
GG: no :/  
TG: (sometimes i understand/what itd be like to pity you)  
TG: (then i imagine flagellating myself with my own calciferous dorsal column/until the sick feeling i get from even thinking about you like that goes away)

She snorted and switched her Mini-husktop into landscape mode so she could keep up with Deivin's typing speed. For a propagandist-assassin prodigy, he was such a dumb goob.

GG: aww deivin  
GG: i bet thats what you say to all the girls who can completely kick your ass :DDD  
TG: (yeah/pretty much)  
GG: so if were done reaffirming how much cooler i am than you...  
TG: (he/y)  
GG: when are you going to tell me about the unannounced spacecraft i see hurtling towards my moon hive????

It was coming in fast. Jadael could see it without her telescope now. She swiveled and lay supine across the cushions so she could watch it approach without missing a beat with Deivin. She needed to focus on moving him along.

TG: (ye/ah)  
TG: (about/that)  
GG: yes deivin about this  
TG: (so you know how i said in my last message/i was finally enacting my plan)  
TG: (my plan to casually yet dramatically/defect to our buddy CGs revolution)  
TG: (in the middle of my squadrons/assigned raid on the rebel base)  
TG: (while slaughtering/my fellow exterminactors)  
TG: (that/plan)  
GG: yes i remember that plan  
TG: (well that part went down as smoothly/as freshly buttered grub butt)  
GG: just like i said it would  
TG: (just like you/said it would)  
TG: (but do you remember/that other thing you said)  
TG: (about how i was going to/reveal your location to them)  
GG: yes  
TG: (and then i was like/pssht naw girl i got your back)  
GG: yes  
TG: (and then/you were like)  
GG: yes deivin i remember all of this!!  
GG: some of us dont need to commune with object ghosts to remember basic conversations we were actually a part of  
TG: (temporal disassociation is a real disabilahahaha/i cant finish that sentence with a straight face)

She took a moment to check the progress of the incoming spacecraft. It was close enough to shine rather than twinkle.

TG: (what would i do to entertain myself if i didnt/see the long sordid history of everything i touch)  
TG: (get shit/done???)  
GG: oh noooooo the horror  
TG: (chronopsychometry is the best rare rustblood power/there are no glaring drawbacks to it ever)  
TG: (besides like you can talk/little miss string theory)  
GG: deivin  
GG: the POINT  
TG: (the good news is i didnt/tell them anything about you)  
GG: uh huh  
TG: (the bad/news is)  
TG: (terezi/pyrope)

Jadael pursed her lips. The name was familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. She mulled over everyone she'd contacted over the past few sweeps and the colors she'd programmed into her sky-wide night planner. Her claws twitched when she remembered a keen green-blue often twinned with Deivin's rust and a brighter, bolder red.

GG: gallowsCalibrator? :o  
TG: (shes either one hell of a pan reader or/she really smelled the green moonshine off my skin)  
GG: orrrrrr  
GG: she asked you a bunch of questions and figured it out based on how much you squirmed  
TG: (my caegars/on the sniffer)  
GG: yes mine too  
TG: (so thats probably the big man/himself dropping in for a chat)  
TG: (hes been grilling everyone we know for intel on you/since the first time you oracled him out of a jam)  
GG: yes im aware  
GG: sign

She'd been six, then. Since that day, Jadael had enjoyed four sweeps of constant all-caps pestering. She'd lost track of how many times he'd brute-forced his way through her blocks to ask her how she'd known about the drones that attacked his hive. She'd have admired his perseverance, if it hadn't been so annoying at the time.

Then again, things would be different now.

TG: (jad/ael)  
GG: hm?  
TG: (im/sorry)  
TG: (you trusted me/and i fucked up)  
TG: (i tried to stop the launch but terezi brained me/with a thousand sweep old cavalreaper pike)  
TG: (i couldnt tell what was present and/what was paleontology for three nights straight)

Oh, no, poor Deivin. The psychic feedback from such an old artifact couldn't have been comfortable. Jadael didn't know whether to feel bad or laugh.

TG: (there/were)  
TG: (so many/prehistoric musclebeasts)

Laugh. Definitely. She giggled as she sat up again and typed her reply.

GG: its ok deivin  
GG: i knew this would happen  
TG: (why didnt you warn me/about the musclebeasts dawg)  
GG: and despite appearances ive been looking forward to meeting karkat for a long while too! :)  
GG: oh shoot looks like im out of time, bye!!  
TG: (wait how do/you know his name)

\-- gangreneGemma [ GG ] ceased trolling temporizedGuillotine [ TG ] --

TG: (you do that/on purpose)

***

Jadael dropped the last five feet from the ladder to the dirt and kept running. With her rifle over her shoulder and her telescope clenched between her teeth, she only had one hand to send her warning.

\-- gangreneGemma [ GG ] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [ CG ] at 04:12:06 --

GG: watch out!!!  
CG: FOR THE LOVE OF EACH OF MY ANCESTOR'S SACRED AND PARABLED FUCKS.  
CG: WHAT LIGHT THROUGH YONDER TRANSPARENT VIEWING PORTAL BREAKS? IT IS THIS TRAVEL HUSKTOP, AND MY OH-SO-MYSTERIOUS AND PROBABLY PSYCHIC BENEFACTOR IS THE HARSH LIGHT THAT STABS AT MY GANDERBULBS.  
GG: oh no  
GG: karkat  
GG: i really dont think this is the time :|  
CG: NO, I THINK THIS IS EX-DIDDLYDEE-ACTLY THE TIME.  
CG: SINCE YOU'RE APPARENTLY ETERNALLY BUSY BEING RECALCITRANT AND ELUSIVE WHEN PEOPLE JUST WANT SOLID ANSWERS, THIS IS IN FACT THE *ONLY* TIME YOU'VE PROVIDED ME!  
CG: I HAVE KEPT OVER FOUR SWEEPS OF BURNING QUESTIONS ON A SLOW BOIL IN MY THINKPAN.  
CG: THEY'VE HAD A LONG TIME TO STEW IN THE HOUSE'S SPECIAL BLEND OF PARANOIA AND BAFFLED OUTRAGE.  
CG: WELCOME TO THE CHEZ DU VANTAS, HAALIE, I'LL BE YOUR FUCKING CHEF, SERVER, AND PERSONAL VALET THIS EVENING.  
GG: ughhh  
GG: is this really necessary  
CG: I HOPE YOU ENJOY THE TASTE OF UNINTELLIGIBLE RAVING BECAUSE THAT'S ALL THAT'S ON THE MENU TONIGHT!  
GG: ok but before you get to the meaty parts of your rant i think you should strap yourself in and put on your helmet!  
CG: WHAT. WHY.  
CG: AND HOW DO YOU KNOW I'M NOT ALREADY WEARING IT?  
CG: WAIT, COULD IT POSSIBLY BE...HITHERTO UNTOLD PSYCHIC POWERS????  
GG: no that was just a really good guess  
CG: OH, OKAY.  
CG: SHIT, I PUT MY HELMET ON AND EVERYTHING. I THOUGHT YOU KNEW SOMETHING I DIDN'T.  
GG: i never said i didnt :P  
GG: buckle up!!  
CG: WHAT  
CG: OH FUCK

\-- carcinoGeneticist's [ CG's ] scalpelcraft has collided with a satellite --

***

A scalpelcraft was small and sleek, built to slice through enemy formations and whip around again before a counterattack. The idea was to disrupt and disorient the enemy. The idea was not to withstand impacts at speed.

The observation satellite wasn't big, but Karkat was basically piloting a Faygo bottle with fins.

Jadael watched the spacecraft tangle with the satellite's arms, and the two, thus embracing, corkscrewed down like mating fluttergrubs. (Known for their coital acrobatics, they were colloquially called "suicide stuntbugs.") From its trajectory, she thought Karkat, somehow, was still trying to pull it out of its tailspin.

She let her Mini-husktop drop, stuck two fingers in her mouth, and whistled.

There was a streak of ozone-tinted white and a burst of green, followed by an explosive crash some miles off. Then there was just a lot of screaming.

"--AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHFUCKOHGODOHFUCKOHSHIT."

A troll, male with stubby horns that poked out of his helmet, appeared in the center of a square of dirt Jadael had marked off in red-and-black striped tape. He had his knees pulled to his chest and his hands over his head, and while she couldn't see his eyes through the tinted goggles he wore, she had an idea she wouldn't be able to pry them open with a crowbar.

"I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY FOR THINKING THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA, I'M SORRY FOR LAUGHING WHEN TEREZI BRAINED THE SRIDAR DOUCHEBAG WITH A SACK OF EQUIUS'S HIDEOUS AND UTTERLY OBSCENE 'PERSONAL MASSAGERS,' I'M SORRY FOR EVERY--uh?"

The new arrival uncurled from the pupal position just as the muzzle of Jadael's rifle came up against his forehead.

"Hi, Karkat!"

Karkat's mouth worked, but no sound came out.

"You know, Deiven said it was a pike, but your story makes a lot more sense. I mean," she tilted her head, but held her rifle rock-steady and continued, "what would you guys be doing with ancient weaponry in your arsenal anyway?"

He went slowly cross-eyed as he stared up the barrel of her gun. Then her lusus stuck a cold nose against the back of his neck.

"Augh!" Karkat whirled, saw the great, white barkbeast behind him, still crackling with cosmic energy and too many teeth, and aborted whatever he'd planned to say. Jadael cleared her laryngeal tube and he came back to attention, goggling at the gun once more. She raised her eyebrows and his face scrunched up.

"Haalie?" He cycled through uncertainty, recognition, and disbelief in rapid succession before returning to bewildered shock. "Didn't I--Wasn't I just about to die in a horrific freak accident involving stolen Imperial property and the worst example of narrative convenience by which I've yet had the pleasure of getting fucked?"

Jadael smiled, showing as many teeth as her lusus. To Karkat's credit, he didn't recoil. "Yep! And now you're being questioned at gunpoint. Just what do you think you're doing here?"

"Holy shit, I knew it." He started to scramble to his feet, but she jabbed at him a little harder with her gun, and he relented. Sort of. If pointing and raising his voice counted as relenting. "I knew you had crazy powers! Are you some kind of mutant lowblood like Deivin, is that why you hid yourself way the fuck out here?"

"Karkat." This time he really did relent, pressing his wordflap thin into a nervous line. Jadael tipped his head back slightly with her rifle to bare a hint of throat. "Asking someone you've just met about their blood color is rude, Mister Hemonymous Hypocrite."

"Yeah. Well." He swallowed and maintained his I'm-pretending-I'm-bigger-than-you cornered-animal glare. Though that could have just been his face. "That's kind of what I came here to talk to you about. If that's, uh, cool."

She huffed. "I think I've made it pretty clear that I don't talk about this sort of thing, Karkat! Do you believe I'm going to change my mind just because you barged in on my hive after tricking information out of Deivin?"

He actually dared to reach up and touch her gun. He didn't grab it, and he didn't try to push it away, but his manual prongs closed delicately around it like it was the opposite of a weapon two seconds from blowing his thinkpan out of his skull. "I really think you're going to want to talk to me."

Jadael, in the end, was the one to yank her rifle away from him. She held it low, but didn't pull it away. "Why?"

"Because," he said, and then he pulled down his goggles.

Jadael found herself face to face with two more ruby stars upon her pale, dusty moon.

***

She'd seen the first red thread the day her irises had begun to fill in. It was real red, not the dark, muted rufous Deivin wove through her life, but something alive, more ardent than the other castes, as bright as her own blood.

Her lusus had kept her secret--kept both of them secret, his blood as fluorescent as hers--until she was old enough to understand why he raised her on an island forest, why he whisked her away from any sign of other trolls. She remembered staring at the lime welling from her cut hands as she crouched on the beach, remembered the spectrum of greens that didn't include hers. She remembered being so small. And then she and her lusus had fled to the moon, because there was no safety on Alternia, when the smallest scrape could get her culled.

But Jadael had been older and stronger when she first saw that flash of red, that other color that didn't belong. She'd been bigger, so it couldn't have been vulnerability that drew her to its foreign brilliance over and over again. It must have been excitement: yes, or feral anticipation. The red thrummed with the promise of asymptotic freedom. It carried the energy that would shake her from stasis, from all this _waiting_.

She'd known Karkat was involved with the red future somehow. She'd seen the color in his stars every time she'd saved him from the Empress, from the caste system, from the planet itself. She'd thought, after meeting her here, he'd prove a return on her efforts. He would point her towards that waiting freedom.

She hadn't known it was him.

"Oh," said Jadael.

He blinked up at her with a dubious frown, squinting against the moon's reflected glow. "So? Did gazing upon the lustrous cherry heat of my colored pupilar discs soften the steel of your resolve, or do I have to keep pounding away like a yodeling midget at the underground anvil of--fuck, I don't know where that was going. Never mind. Assume I said something that made total sense and would befit the leader of a vast and uncompromising army for justice."

Karkat looked less sure than he sounded. Jadael considered him for a moment, taking stock of his empty hands, his unready posture, the set to his mouth that spoke more to nerves than real fear without excluding the latter entirely.

His eyes were red. His _blood_ was red. He'd had to lie and hide all his life, just like her. He must have been just as scared and alone as she had been, when she had been small enough to be scared.

Small enough to be alone.

"Hmmm. Nope," she said, but she shouldered her rifle again. "I'd say I'm just as resolutely steeled as ever, weird troll dwarf references or not. That was _kind_ of nerdy, badass revolutionary guy."

"Shut up," he growled, but she was already offering him a hand.

"Let's start over. Hi! I'm Jadael Haalie. It's nice to meet you, I guess, even if you're pretty impolite and crashed your ride in my space garden."

Karkat took her hand, but didn't seem to know what to do with it. She hauled him upright regardless and let him go to regain his feet.

"Hi," he said, watching her with his eyebrows drawn together like she might sprout howlbeast ears from her cranial enclosure next for all he knew. "Uh, sorry about your garden? I'm Karkat Vantas. You already know that. What exactly are we doing this for?"

"Nice to meet you," she said again, ignoring his question. "Welcome to my general hive area! I've lived here since I was about six sweeps old. By the way, I'm a limeblood."

***

"You see the future," Karkat repeated. He stared at her rather than at the complex compass of the dome over his head, for all its auroral glimmering. She'd just finished explaining how each color represented someone, how a light's movement and position reflected the time and place of her visions. The stars winked through the gaps between wires like captive firebugs. "You're a total outcast, leftovers from a caste snuffed out for its unbelievable powers, and you _see the future_."

"Sort of. It's less like seeing, more like knowing. Or doing. I dream a lot." Jadael stretched both arms out and twirled once. "It's basically like a big game of Troll Memory, or trying to do six hundred jigsaw puzzles at once. I see some things, and then I try to match them with events that happen later. What you're looking at is the map I've made of it all."

Karkat tugged a strand of a more sedate green. Rings of light spread from its anchoring point, returning sprays of cerulean, violet, and what she now recognized as Karkat's vibrant red.

"Kanaya thought you might be a rogue jadeblood," he said. "And I figured you were some kind of undiscovered psionic, up someone's feces-smeared paddle with no creek for miles. I thought maybe we could help you survive."

"Or I could help you," she retorted, folding her arms.

He glowered for a second, but then his indignation guttered. "Or you could help us," he agreed. "Or, hell, who am I kidding. Help _me_. I'm not running this farce for my own amusement. I wouldn't be here if I weren't a mutant freak and didn't have Her Imperious Condescension personally defecating in my grubflakes every night."

Jadael glanced at Karkat's sour, somehow disappointed expression, like he found his motivation a personal failing, and then shook her hair free of its hoofbeast-tail. "You know, some people would consider nightly deposits from the Empress a huuuuge honor."

"Some people," said Karkat, "wouldn't know their own nook from a pit of herniated slime vipers."

"There's no such thing as a slime viper, dumbass!" She had to hold the hair tie in her mouth as she used both hands to finger-comb the snarls out of her hair. "And if there were, they wouldn't get hernias."

"Oh, so now the cloistered moon princess is the expert on Alternian fauna, huh?" He was looking at the ceiling again, so Jadael pulled the hair tie taut and snapped it at his cheek. Karkat flinched and slapped at himself. "Augh, god, no, you put that in your slobbery barkbeast mouth!"

"Probably cleaner than yours." She laughed as he tried to kick the hair tie back at her and missed it entirely. He stalked away, muttering to himself as she bent to retrieve it.

As she dusted it off, he finally said, in a gruffer, quieter voice, "So, what did you decide?"

"Mm?" She glanced up. "What did I decide about what?"

Karkat turned to her, solemn and adult--nothing like the six-sweep-old she'd once warned to run. "About letting us help you. Or helping us, whatever the fuck. I'll be honest, we could really use a troll with your particular talents."

She played the tie around her fingers. "Hmm."

His patience lasted about five seconds. "Well, fine, then what did your dreams say you'd do?"

Jadael felt herself go quiet as she looked at him. He wasn't a big troll. He didn't inspire confidence. But he was solid, and he was sturdy, and he was real. He was the first real troll she'd seen, ever. And he was inviting her out into space. She didn't just lack words; she felt as though she teetered on the edge of a great precipice. It made her feel small.

But not alone. But not afraid. She smiled.

"You wouldn't really want me to spoil it for us like that, would you? It's more important to do things the right way."

He stared. "What."

"For the right reasons, at the right time! I mean, knowing the future's a pretty great cheat code, but things don't always turn out the way you think they should. I wouldn't want to do anything just because I saw it in a dream and thought I was supposed to."

"But--You--" This appeared to be too much for Karkat's delicate thinkpan. He opened and closed his hands as if to keep speech from escaping him. Finally, he got out, "Then _why_ \--"

"Because I wanted to, duh!" She propped her fists on her hips and beamed at him. "If I didn't want to meet you, you wouldn't be here. Did you really think I'd have told _Deivin Sridar_ where I live if I wanted to keep myself holed up on this space rock for the rest of my life?"

For a long, long moment, Karkat did nothing but gape at her. Then he laughed, a surprisingly rich bark of a sound that, she found, did inspire confidence in her.

"Great! Then let's blow this goddamn flimsy mass-produced frozen sugar-water-on-a-stick product vending establishment." Karkat started to turn but caught the smoke rising from the wreckage of his stolen scalpelcraft. He gave the moment its due pause. "You do have a craft we can use, right."

Jadael turned the wattage of her smile up higher. "Do I?"

"Haalie."

"Hmm..."

"Haalie, seriously."

"Hmmmmmmmm.......!"

" _Jadael._ "

"Nope." Karkat seemed to deflate and bristle all at once, and she had to stuff a fist in her mouth to keep from laughing. "But my lusus does! He can show you. Here, boy!"

Karkat's ranting and swearing cut off abruptly as he was teleported out of her hive. But, as he vanished, Jadael felt a strange texture on her tongue and removed her hand from her mouth.

A two-stranded braid of string was looped around her index finger. Her hair tie. She'd slipped it over the knuckle without thinking, and she turned it, thoughtful.

A twined thread of red and green.

Jadael looked at the sky again, thought of the future, and spun in place until the stars whirled across her glasses like a rain of rockets, laughing and free.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [string theory (the lonely island remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7662937) by [zxanthe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zxanthe/pseuds/zxanthe)




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